Pierrot Le Fou (1965) is a typical Godardian pot-pourri, peppered with literary, cinematic and political references. Godard reworks the lovers-on-the-run story of his first film Breathless, broadening its scope and sharpening its satire. Knowing well that their love story is "all sound and fury", devoid of harmony and trust, Ferdinand and Marianne still play out this farce to its tragic end. Confused, insecure and restless, they remain strangers to each other and to the world around them. In his idiosyncratic style, bombarding viewers with words and images, Godard portrays a bizarre, absurd world, not unlike our own.

"I'm less concerned with what people do than what is going on in their minds while they are doing it", said Eric Rohmer, talking about his Six Moral Tales. Indeed, conversations dominate his films, with dramatic action being a rarity. Claire's Knee (1970) revolves around a soon-to-be-married man who is fascinated by a teenaged girl's knee (the right one). Eventually, when he managed to caress it, he feels fulfilled and free from desire. It's all very graceful, but the Achilles' heel of Claire's Knee is its verbosity — too little is left unsaid.

When it comes to movies about movie-making, Truffaut's Day for Night takes the cake. In this comedy, he himself plays the director's part and Jean-Pierre Leaud is cast as the leading man of the film within the film. Oliver Assayas' Irma Vep, shown at the festival, deals with the same theme, with Leaud now in the director's chair. Oddly, it features Maggie Cheung, a co-star of Jackie Chan in several action flicks, who is cast as, guess who, herself. The chaotic scenes behind the scenes are amusing, but the film succeeds only partially in fulfilling its promise.

In The Gleaners & I (2000), France's foremost woman film-maker Agnes Varda travels across the country to observe various forms of gleaning. She sees the have-nots retrieving things thrown away by the haves. While some people glean for the sake of survival, others do it out of curiosity. As the film progresses, Varda feels that she is a gleaner herself, using the medium of cinema to glean images, ideas, experiences from the world around her. Now here is a documentary which is revealing, moving and also entertaining.

On the whole, these films are rooted in French culture and demonstrate the development of its cinema over the past half-century. What is missing here is a historical perspective (barring Godard's film), as if Charles de Gaulle's rule, the events of May, 1968, the Algerian war and the "youth culture" had no French connection. The film-makers' lack of political commitment and their preoccupation with inter-personal relationships are quite apparent. However, there is none to doubt their passion for cinema or their efforts to enrich its language.